good(ish) samaritan

Upon arriving home from my March Madness trip to SoCal (southern California for those of you who live outside of Ahnold’s jurisdiction), I found a puffy package in my mailbox. I ripped it open, hopeful that it was my long lost (okay, fine, only five days, but it seemed like forever) wallet. Except that it felt kind of skinny – and it was. No money inside. Not that I expected it. When I resigned myself to the fact that my wallet was not in any of the four thousand pockets of my purse/laptop bag/suitcase, I proclaimed, “I don’t care if they take all the money, I just want to get my license back so I don’t have to stand in line at the DMV.”

So why was I so bummed to find a cashless wallet? Perhaps because when I looked at the return address, there was none! It said “Sender Not Identified, General Delivery, San Francisco.” Question is: why didn’t the mysterious good(ish) samaritan not want to be identified?

1) Good(ish) Samaritan Daniel found the wallet without cash in it and didn’t want to be accused of taking his own reward (my mother’s theory).

b) Good(ish) Samaritan Daniel is wildly famous and didn’t want to draw attention to his celebrity status to avoid appearing in the latest issue of US Weekly as a hero.

iii) Good(ish) Samaritan Daniel took his reward in advance.

For those of you who guessed iii, 3, or c - you are right! Well, I don't KNOW that you are right, but I am 99.99999 (repeating) percent sure that this is the correct option. Even considering the statistical variance of .000001 percent, you are still right. A+++++ right. And here I am - missing my cash, but still in possession of my newly renewed license, all my cancelled credit cards, my blood donor card, my library card and the receipt from my grocery store allowing me to get a 10 cent discount per gallon on my next gasoline purchase. Good news is that Daniel will not be donating pints of blood under the auspices of yours truly, I will not have exorbitant library tabs run up in my name and my next gas purchase will likely be below four bucks a gallon (if I go today - if I wait until tomorrow it might be $5.39/gallon). Other good news is that I no longer have a lingering concern that I will have to do something amazing to pay back the good karma that I received for getting my wallet back – I am confident that Daniel voided the karma exchange by taking all the cash out of my wallet.

The moral of this story is (it is a simple one): don’t lose your wallet.